Comedy Central just got their holiday wish granted.  The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert have both agreed to return to the cable network with new episodes, beginning on January 7. Like the two NBC late night shows (The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Nite with Conan O'Brien) Stewart and Colbert will return to the air without writers.  The shows will reportedly try to work around the lack of written material by relying on pre-taped field segments.  The WGA strike not only keeps writers off of the series, it forbids shows to air or write anything that would normally be in the domain of the writers.  For Stewart and Colbert, under this definition, that constitutes most of their shows. 

Though Jon Stewart does go off-book, making self-deprecating remarks or commenting on the quality of his own jokes, almost every non-interview moment of the show is scripted.  For Colbert, almost every second of the show is scripted, including nightly segments like “The Word.”  The pre-taped segments will have to be a crutch, but one has to assume that a fair amount of the correspondents are WGA members, though Variety reports that some of the correspondents are members of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and not the WGA. 

However, reports this morning say that the WGA is not happy with the return of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report.  In a statement in response to Comedy Central's announcement, the WGA stated, “Forcing Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert back on the air will not give the viewers the quality shows they've come to expect. The only way to get the writing staffs back on the job is for the AMPTP companies to come back to the table prepared to negotiate a fair deal with the Writers Guild."

The quality of the shows will suffer immeasurably.  I have no doubt about this.  But, then again, I'll be happy to have late night options once again.  My DVR has been barren since the strike began and the talks shows went dark.  Selfishly, this is good news. 


-Oscar Dahl, BuddyTV Senior Writer
Source: TV Guide
(Image Courtesy of Comedy Central)